I am, obviously, very suggestable to emailed sales announcements from my favorite shaving brands or stores. Because I got a discount offer from Maggard Razors and felt the urge to spend $50 or so bucks on some pre-shave, soap and aftershave balm samples…and a brush.
Then I got a notification that Razor Emporium had gotten their rewards program working on their site again, and I found that I had some points to spend, so another $25 dropped there on some blades and another brush.
So, what was added?
Let’s start with the blades. I grabbed 3 new to me blades, and one that I’d said I wouldn’t restock. But I lied to myself, apparently.
One hot new (or new-ish, improved, rebranded, maybe?) blade is the Personna GEM Platinum Diamond Glide. (Yeah, just pretend that the printing on the blade over there is actually readable. I’m not about to open another blade right now to see if it looks better). Personna, one of the few remaining US-based manufacturers of double-edge razor blades, announced at some point last year that they were discontinuing their Comfort Coated Blades and replacing them with the GEM Platinum Diamond Glide blades. This caused some displeasure and consternation within the shaving ranks, because the Comfort Coated were favorites of some group within the shaving population. To be honest, I hadn’t heard of them, but I’d heard of the Personna brand, and really like their Personna Red blades.
Now, Personna also owns the GEM brand, and this brand is known for single-edge razor blades, and, well, rebranding makes some people twitchy. But after the blades came out and people started trying them out, they’ve been a hit. The problem is that they’re sold only in boxes of 100 by Personna, so the only way to try them out is to watch for inventory of 5-packs from one of the shaving retailers out there. So I picked up 20 blades because they were only $5 at Razor Emporium.
Apparently with these blades, it’s the coating that’s the winner, something carried over from the Comfort Coated blades and improved upon, according to some of the reviews I’ve read. So I’m looking forward to trying them out. Look for that in the future.
Because I’ve seen them used in a few SOTDs online lately, I grabbed 2 tucks of Super Gillette Blue blades as I’m always down to try a Gillette blade. These are either a reincarnation of the old Gillette Blue blade line, or just a continuation of the existing line that are being imported again–there doesn’t seem to be clear agreement on whether they’re reborn or not. At any rate, the markings are interesting, as they’re made in Shanghai, but clearly have some packaging information written in Thai or Vietnamese. At any rate, I found them intriguing, especially since there’s a pretty active market for new old-stock razor blades (which kind of weirds me out for reasons I can’t define), and the Gillette Blue blades are fairly highly sought after.
I also picked up 2 tucks of Wilkinson Sword blades. Wilkinson Sword, interestingly, started out as an actual weapons manufacturer in England in 1772, and added swords to the portfolio in the 1820s. So somewhere along the way, they also started making razors and razor blades. There’s a lot of confusion over whether they’re owned by Gillette–they’re not, they’re actually owned by the same company that owns Schick. But Gillette does own the brand rights in India, where they make their own Gillette-branded version of the Wilkinson Sword blades and those also get imported into the US. That is not what I have here. But the Wilkinson Sword brand holds a lot of history in shaving circles, so I figured I needed to give them a try.
The last set of 2 tucks of blades I grabbed was the PAA Platinum Strangelet Super Sharps. When I tried them in 3 of my razors last fall, I was happy with their performance, but generally unexcited by them. And yet, something possessed me to drop 39 cents per blade on a small restock. Go figure.
On to brushes. I find myself liking unique-looking (though modern and cool and not the hand-carved look) shaving brushes lately. There are a couple of makers on Etsy who do very interesting work with resin and wood, but I’m not at a point yet where I can easily see my way to dropping $75-150 or more on a really fabulous looking brush.
So instead, I try to stay inside of $25 for brushes. And when I saw the Parker Blue Storm synthetic brush for $25, I grabbed it. The color of the synthetic bristles intrigued me, along with the dreamy star-like blue field with stars on the handle. I’ve also been considering limiting myself to animal fibers for my brushes lately for humane reasons, so that’s why I went synthetic here, even though boar is my favorite bristle type.
I’m also finding myself attracted to adding inexpensive brushes to carts. This is how I ended up with the comically small Omega 11047 boar/badger combo brush, which I’ve since learned is also called “the mixed midget.”
But along that inexpensive vein, I grabbed an Omega S10049–yes, the number closely matches another boar brush I have–but this one has a standard Omega handle design used in the Proraso brush matched to a synthetic boar-like bristle. And it was only $9.
Let’s finish this up with the new lathers, aftershave, and pre-shave.
Maggard is my go-to for samples, so when they throw a sale, I have to check it out. It’s the easiest way I’ve found to try out a soap without dropping $20 or more on a full tub that I might not love.
For a while I’ve toyed with the idea of sampling the Proraso Nourishing (red) line. Maggard didn’t have a sample of the aftershave balm, so I just got the pre-shave and soap, but I can use the white balm with it and everything should be fine. It’s use-case doesn’t seem to really apply to me, with a stated purpose of being for thick and coarse hair, so I never really thought I’d need it. But I figured at about $2.50/sample tub, I probably should give it a go.
I decided to grab a couple more US-based artisanal soap makers’ products, getting Ariana & Evans Asian Pear and Wholly Kaw’s Project Leather soaps.
I also picked up some Castle Forbes 1445 soap and aftershave balm. Castle Forbes is, at least, made in a castle in Scotland, so there’s that going for it. It’s one of those older new brands (being established in 1996), so I’m interested in giving it a go.
And rounding out the soap samples is one from D.R. Harris & Co., specifically their Arlington scent. D.R. Harris & Co. has been in the pharmacy and apothecary business since 1790, and at some point in their history started making shaving products as well. One thing I noted from their information on their website is that if you are within 1 mile of their shop on St. James’ Street in London, they’ll deliver to you via bicycle.
Oh, but there’s one other add: a full-sized lather. I finally picked up some Tabac shaving cream. Tabac is one of those classic, ubiquitous, love-it-or-hate-it brands, like Arko. It’s fairly popular, though generally more expensive than some other, less controversial brands. But I grabbed a tube, so that will get into the mix in the weeks to come.
So those are the recent adds. Watch for them to be used in upcoming SOTDs and for full reviews down the road. As mentioned in another post here, I’m hitting an inventory point where I will be trying new things well into the summer, so you and I have that to look forward to.